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Wynton and the Essentially Ellington Jazz Band Competition 2005
Wynton Marsalis didn’t mind losing sleep for some high school band members. While on tour in a town “somewhere in Washington state” a few months ago, “I was doing a gig and it was midnight,” Marsalis told The Associated Press. “This girl, about 14, came to see me and I said, ‘What are you doing out so late?’”
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Sound Portraits Influenced by the View From the Train
When jazz bands played one-nighters in long lists of fourth-tier American towns, trains were a major part of their logistical life. But trains naturally crept into jazz composers’ aesthetic lives, too. At least, this was the case with Duke Ellington, who worked so much about the outside world into his music.
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LCJO with Wynton Marsalis returns Full-Steam Ahead to Rose Theater
On February 24, 25 and 26, for a special series of jazz performances entitled Full-Steam Ahead, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (LCJO) revisits a time when the sounds of locomotives inspired jazz. The world-renowned orchestra brings the sharp-edged syncopations and hard-chugging rhythms inspired by America’s steam-driven locomotives to its new home, Frederick P. Rose Hall. Featuring former LCJO members Wycliffe Gordon (trombone) and Rodney Whitaker (bass), the LCJO explores how the locomotive onomatopoeia was reflected in the developing rhythms of jazz in the first half of the 20th century.
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The Duke and the Count: LCJO with Wynton Marsalis in the Allen Room
This evening, October 25, 2004, at 7:30pm marks the only opportunity this season to experience the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton in The Allen Room.
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Unfolding under the stars are Duke Ellington’s 1943 Black, Brown, & Beige, a three-movement symphony, and the most important and successful longform work in the history of jazz. -
Wynton Plays the Music of Duke Ellington for Brooks Brothers
Brooks Brothers announced the release of a special edition CD featuring first time recordings created exclusively for Brooks Brothers by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton.
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Just the Best In Ellington’s Sacred Works
The church of Duke Ellington admitted many denominations: gospel, opera, tap and interpretive dance, European orchestral music and hot, small-group percussiveness. His three Sacred Concerts, given their premieres in 1965, 1968 and 1973, weren’t jazz Masses: he insisted on a difference between talking to God and, as he described his own efforts, ‘‘people talking to people about God.’’ So he took his jazz conception, complete with elements of a nightclub show, into cathedrals. Keep reading »
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Jammin’ with the CSO
From the moment Daniel Barenboim stepped up to the podium, it was clear that musical conventions were about to be incinerated. Rather than pick up his baton and signal a downbeat for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as he does each week in Symphony Center, the maestro turned around, faced the audience and began to speak directly to the crowd. Keep reading »
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Sonic pleasures - Marsalis and Barenboim marshal their forces for outstanding Ellington tribute
There has been no shortage of Duke Ellington tributes this year, but few have marshaled quite so many resources - or used them as ingeniously - as the program in Symphony Center this week. Keep reading »
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Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra: Live in Swing City Swingin’ With The Duke
What a responsibility, what an inspiring challenge, what an honor it is to have the opportunity to replicate and help preserve the greatest body of music America has yet given to the world! Intimidating and awesome, to be sure, but that is exactly what the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra has undertaken in its endeavor to keep the majesty of Duke Ellington’s music alive. Although sometimes assailed for a perceived conservatism by those who equate anarchy and iconoclasm with esthetic quality or “progress,” the LCJO is actually maintaining an honorable and ancient tradition, as exemplified by man’s innate need to revere and perpetuate by ritual the memory of his ancestors. Keep reading »
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Maybe jazz can’t go home again
If jazz is America’s classical music, why aren’t there more groups like the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra? Keep reading »